A Captain's Carol
by Soledad
Summary: On Christmas Eve, after All Good Things, Picard has a moment of doubt. A sappy little Christmas vignette.


**A CAPTAIN'S CAROL**

**By Soledad**

**Disclaimer:** All Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry and Viacom or whoever owns the rights at this moment. I don't make any profit out of this – I wish I would, but I don't, so suing me would be pointless.

**Rating:** G

**Series:** none.

**Archiving:** Please, ask first. I like to know where my stuff goes.

**Summary:** On Christmas Eve, after _All Good Things_, Picard ponders over the changes in his life, not all of them pleasant. A sappy little Christmas story.

**Author's notes:**

I set this little vignette between the series finale and G_enerations_. Since the Picards were such traditionalists – except the good captain, of course – I assumed that they'd go all the way and go to church as well.

* * *

**_Enterprise_, December 24. 2370 – old Earth calendar**

Sitting in the living area of his quarters, Captain Jean-Luc Picard set aside his book and asked the computer to lower the lights to twenty-five per cent. Then he just sat in the semi-darkness, which mirrored his darkened mood all too well, asking himself whether reading _A Christmas Carol _by Dickens had truly been such a wise choice. It certainly made him even more depressed than he had been before.

The _Enterprise_ was patrolling alongside the Romulan Neutral Zone once again. The recent events having left both sides in a state of upheaval – it seemed that he wasn't the only person to remember certain things, after all. And although he days remained blissfully uneventful, he could not find any solace in the fact that they – _he_ –managed to prevail a catastrophe of galactic size one more time.

Too much had happened in the recent year. Too many close calls. Too many losses, both on a general and on a personal level.

Another brush with the Borg, this time as a result of their encounter with Hugh. Being manipulated by the Iyaaran Voval. Watching Geordi going AWOL in a suicidal manner, falsely believing that he was rescuing his mother. Playing hide-and-seek with mercenaries and homicidal Vulcan isolationists, who – very logically – felt that Vulcan's "problems" were linked to contamination by illogical people, and who, equally logically, found that the only way out would be to rid their world of its leaders and any off-worldlers. Dealing with Data's nightmares that had been the reflection of a very real interphasic alien takeover. And the list went on and on and on…

Being telepathically attached to Beverly. It had been the most frighteningly intimate episode of his life, one he still had nightmares about. Hosting Sarek's violent emotions had been nothing compared with it. The naked vulnerability to have another person in his mind, not being able to hide _anything_, not even his deepest secrets… And yet, he often asked himself afterwards, if he hadn't been such a coward, would Beverly truly have fallen for a ghost on Caldos IV?

Yes, he knew that technically speaking the entity hadn't been a ghost. But it didn't change the fact that the association with it had almost caused Beverly's death… or the same sort of unhealthy dependence that had been the very foundation of her grandmother's life. Would she have been so fallible for the entity's charms had Picard not shied back from her after the events on Kesprytt?

It seemed to him that he had become a different person during the recent year: harder, more obsessed with duty, less accessible to other people. If it was the repeated exposure to the Borg, something that had raised most unpleasant memories in him, or his growing discomfort with current Federation politics, he didn't know. Learning that Starfleet had, indeed, experienced with cloaking technology, violating the Treaty of Algernon, that Admiral Pressman had been willing to have his ship destroyed and his entire crew killed, just to get that piece of faulty technology retrieved, had been quite the eye-opener.

Learning that high warp speed destroyed subspace had been another shock, shaking the seemingly solid foundations of his universe badly. Especially since someone had to sacrifice her life to make her point noticed by Federation authorities. Sometimes he asked himself if it was truly the same institution he had sworn an oath to protect all those years ago.

And then he had to send Sito to her death. Granted, the Bajoran had volunteered, and they had needed to get their Cardassian contact back home safely, but still… _he_ had given the orders. He had rarely second-guessed his decisions before, but Sito had been so young, so eager to redeem herself after her Academy fiasco. She had worked so hard. Even Worf had been pleased with her headway, and few people had ever managed to please the Klingon. She could have achieved so much.

Losing Sito had been one of the hardest things in his career. Not only because it had been his orders that sent her to that mission of no return. It was also because he had seen so much potential in her that should have been nurtured to unfold. She could have become one of the best Starfleet officers Bajor had ever sent to the Academy – and now she was dead, by _his_ orders.

And then there was the thing with Beverly's only son. To be honest, Picard had never particularly liked Wesley; not as a boy, not as a young man later. Wesley had always been irritating to the extreme. But he _was_ Jack and Beverly's son, and out of friendship towards his parents, the captain had made it his duty to care for him and felt responsible for his well-being. And now Wesley was gone, too. Not quite dead, just existing on a so-called higher plan with the Traveller, but just as lost for his mother.

This was a loss Picard could understand very well, after DaiMon Bok's recent scheme. Thinking that he might have been a father had come as a shock, and Jason Vigo certainly was not the son he'd have dreamed of, had he ever cared to have children of his own. But after having spent some time with the troubled yet resilient young man, he had actually begun to warm up to the idea of fatherhood.

Only to have it snatched away from him when Bok's ruse had been revealed.

And then he had lost Ro Laren, too. That was the more bitter thing of all. Of all the young officers he had guided on the rocky way of their careers, Ro had come the closest to be his personal protégée. He had thought he had won her for Starfleet values for good. He had been so proud of her… and so bitterly disappointed by her deflection.

Although, in retrospect, he was surprised how could he possibly have believed that Ro would actually go through with their plan and turn the Maquis in. The Maquis stood for everything she had values all her life: freedom, resistance, protecting their own. They were the very cause she had been looking for. They could give her a purpose that was much loser to her heart and ambitions than anything Starfleet could have ever hoped to offer.

So many losses… Sito and Wesley, Jason and Ro… and, of course, Beverly…

His short glimpses into the future, due to Q's most recent actions, revealed that they would, eventually, get together – only to break up again. Of course, the fact that he now knew the future might very well change the same future in itself. He just didn't know what sort of change he would want. Should he try to save that future marriage, or should he try to keep it from happening entirely?

Maybe his father had been right. Maybe staying at home, leading a simpler life, similar to that of his brother, would have made him more content.

Although he doubted it. He had always been much too curious, much too restless, much too ambitious to remain in LaBarre and tend the family vineyard.

He checked Earth time with the computer. Almost midnight in France. Marie, Robert and René had already eaten the traditional, home-made meal: chestnut soup, roast turkey with salad, and, of course, the inevitable_bûche de Noël _– a rolled cake, filled with chestnut cream and coated in icing. This cake represented the Yule log burned from Christmas until New Year in earlier times, to bring good luck in the coming year. Those customs were no longer in use, but the cake remained, and Marie made an exceptionally tasty one every year.

The presents had most likely been opened already, and right now, they were probably preparing themselves for midnight mass, as it had been the Picard family's wont. Maybe they'd even spare a thought for their distant relative in outer space. The thought was strangely comforting for the captain.

When he closed his eyes, he could still remember the little parish church of his home village. Could feel the pleasant coolness of its interior, smell the faint aroma of incense that after the centuries had permeated the wood of the altar, pews and kneelers. Could see the candlesticks and flowers adorning the altar, the white glow of the immaculate linen covering. His mother had been washing those coverings for years upon years… always by hand, out of respect, she had said…

He remembered the decorative patterns of the communication rail, wrought iron, polished to stainless perfection by the altar boys, and the fun they had had polishing it as children. The tall, arched stained glass windows that showed biblical scenes. The marble statues of saints, with their rows of votive lights, blinking in warm reds and golds. The names on the engraved plagues along the walls.

The beauty of that place had touched him every time he had set foot in the church, and it touched him still, even though he had long drifted apart from his childhood faith. The little church, in which generations of Picards had gone in centuries past, was _home_. Just as the house in which he had grown up, and in which now Robert and his family – his own only family – lived now would always be.

A home to which one day he might return. If his recent glimpses into a possible future were any indication.

But until that day, his place was out here, in the lonely darkness of space, to guard those who kept a home for him to where he could return.

And Captain Picard rose from his seat, searching for that single candle he knew had to be somewhere in his bedside table. He lit it and sang softly in his mother tongue:

_Il es né, le divin Enfant,_

_Jouez, hautbois, résonnez, musettes;_

_Il est né, le divin Enfant,_

_Chantons tous son avenement..._

- The End -


End file.
